The most fascinating aspect of India is its ethnic and cultural
diversity. Throughout the millennia, even when there were from time to time
strong and large empires covering the whole of the subcontinent, this diversity
remained as these centralised states had only administrative and military control
through outsourcing to feudal lords and kings at various levels, while day to
day life and culture went on in a myriad ways across the Indian subcontinent. Thus,
even if there was a centralised emperor ruling the whole of India there was no
centralised monolithic bureaucracy extending from the centre of power to the remote villages and
instead there was a system of autonomous units which paid taxes to the next higher level. That
is why, even the long period of Mughal rule of over two centuries could not
dent this autonomy and diversity at the grassroots. However, the British
changed all that with the Government of India Act of 1858 transferring the
power to rule India from the East India Company to the Crown. The British were
clever enough to see that the revolt of 1857 had come so close to kicking them
out precisely because many Indian kings and queens (The Rani of Jhansi being
the great example of female valour) had retained considerable autonomy under
Company rule. Therefore, through the Government of India Act, the British
imposed a strong centralised bureaucratic system all over India and subsequently
through other legislations like the Indian Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Code,
Indian Forest Act and Land Acquisition Act, grassroots autonomy was severely
curtailed. Strict surveillance of the hundreds of autonomous princely states was
also done to see that they followed the same principles of centralised governance that the British introduced in the provinces directly ruled by them. An
education system dominated by English was introduced which further marginalised
diverse vernacular cultures.
The Savarna elite, which tasted the power of this centralisation
after limited governance was given to them by the 1935 version of the
Government of India Act, and the nascent Indian capitalist class which had made
their millions through exploitation of the workers and peasants facilitated by
the centralised British rule, saw virtue in continuing with this centralised
system and so after independence it was adopted without any changes whatsoever
for the running of the country. A highly centralised state apparatus was put in
place and a "trickle down" approach to development was adopted
completely sidelining the provision of universal school education, primary
health, rural development and employment. Indigenous knowledge systems were ignored and local
ecosystems were devastated for modern industrial development and instead of
development trickling down what we have had in over seventy years of development is the appropriation of resources and labour for capital accumulation in cities and towns to the detriment of
the vast rural areas of this country.
This complete neglect of a bottom up view of governance and development
has resulted in a continuous botching up of policies and programmes, as I have detailed in many earlier posts and never more so than in the
management of the COVID 19 pandemic recently. Very little was known of the
disease when the first cases were detected in early March other than that it
was highly infectious and fatal. Epidemiologists had on the basis of statistical
modelling begun predicting that there would be millions of cases that would
overwhelm the country's ricketty health infrastructure and so a national
lockdown was imposed post haste on March 25th in a typically top
down decision without taking into consideration what this would entail for 95
per cent of the population of this country who survive on daily wages and
marginal agriculture. While the plight of the migrant workers eventually gained
considerable media attention because of their desperate attempts to return
home, those of the local workers did not because they at least had a place to
stay and so remained invisible. In fact such a big decision as to completely close down a country,
something that has never been done before, cannot succeed when taken in such a hasty and dictatorial
manner. There should have been discussion and debate in which all the pros and
cons of such a lockdown should have been weighed.
It became quite clear within a week of the lockdown that the disease was
spreading only in a few cities and was absent elsewhere and especially in rural
areas. Under the circumstances there should have been a review of the national
lockdown and instead the decision to lockdown or not should have been left with
the local governments and not even the state governments. Even within cities
where the disease was spreading fast, only areas that were forming clusters should have
been marked as containment zones and the rest of the city areas should have
been freed. Instead the lockdown was continually extended again and again for a
total period of nine weeks. By the end of this time the spread of the disease
was not controlled by the lockdown as had been predicted by the epidemiologists
but the economy, both of the country as a whole and especially that of 95% of its households who
do not have regular incomes, had been completely devastated. Governments, both
at the centre and even more in the states, were faced with empty coffers, as
without any economic activity they were not getting any taxes. So the lockdown
had to be lifted and the spread of the disease has increased substantially over
the last month since. A selective lockdown strategy containing only the hotspots right from the beginning as tried in Sweden would have been much more effective by concentrating resources and allowing economic activity to go on with proper distancing safeguards.
What is of even greater concern is that the police had been given
extraordinary powers to keep people forcibly indoors and they misused it to
their heart's content. There were innumerable instances of the police beating
up and incarcerating people. I go out for a run in my colony in Indore at 5.30
am every day. Our colony and in fact the whole south eastern part of Indore
where our colony is situated has not had a single case of COVID 19 even though
there were several cases in the more central parts of the city. Yet one day two
cops on a motorbike came to our colony at 5.30 am in the morning and threatened
to beat me up with a baton if I did not go back into my house. Absurd as it is,
the motto of the police was to beat up first and ask questions later. The most
horrendous of such incidents is the beating to death of a father and son duo in
Tamil Nadu recently allegedly for violation of lockdown rules and then the
whole of the administration and government backing up the police who had
committed this atrocity.
It is only after the press and the High Court have
taken cognisance that action has now been initiated against the guilty
policemen. The fate of Jayaraj and his son Bennicks who have laid down their
lives to this police brutality will haunt every thinking citizen of this
country for quite a while. I at least have been deeply disturbed by their
deaths as never before and I have seen quite a few brutalities in my time as an
activist.
Thus, it is high time that we free ourselves from the malevolent British
legacy of centralised rule, enforced through draconian policing and adopt a bottom up democratic perspective of
governance and development which respects the immense diversity and knowledge
that is there at the grassroots.
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